growth (36)

In a modern business era of near-constant disruption, which brands are winning the hearts of consumers the fastest?

Today’s charts look at the brands that are trending upwards. See below for the brands that have gained the most in brand value since last year, as assessed by BrandZ in their report on the world’s 100 most valuable brands.

Onwards and Upwards for Tech

As many big name brands try to find their footing in today’s fast-paced consumer environment, it’s not surprising to see up-and-coming tech brands skyrocketing in value.

In line with growing revenues, tech brands like Amazon, Facebook, and Netflix are also flying high with their brands. Amazon, for example, had its brand value soar 41% since last year to make it the fourth most valuable brand in the world…

IF THERE is a consensus at the moment, it is that the global economy is finally managing a synchronised recovery. The purchasing managers' index for global manufacturing is at its highest level for six years; copper, the metal often seen as the most sensitive to global conditions, is up by a quarter since May.

However, such predictions also serve a very practical purpose for investors and business leaders, since failing to adapt to changing industry paradigms can completely decimate a business venture, turning it into the next Blockbuster, Kodak, or Sears.

Today’s infographic from Futurism rounds up some of the most interesting predictions about the future, from trusted sources such as Scientific American and The National Academy of Sciences.

With the recent announcement from Volvo that all vehicles will have electric engines in 2019 and phase out combustion engines, it becomes shockingly clear that electric is growing.................and faster than we have previously believed. Clearly Tesla (TSLA) has more competition than ever before so I bring you this piece from McKinsey to give you the breakdown. By the way, what does this mean for crude oil? Just tossng it out there.

New research on electric mobility reveals Chinese OEMs produced 43 percent of EVs worldwide in 2016 and highlights other trends in supply and demand.

Y Combinator, one of best-known Silicon Valley accelerators, has an impressive track record of success. With well-timed investments in Dropbox, Stripe, and Airbnb, the startups in the company’s portfolio are now worth an aggregate of $600 billion in market capitalization.

While Y Combinator has made a clear impact on the tech sector, the company also launched an internal side project in 2007 that would end up becoming highly influential in a different and surprising way.

Its user-powered news aggregator called Hacker News, which is now visited by 20 million people per month, has become a mainstay for entrepreneurs, tech professionals, and venture capitalists around the world. Using a Reddit-like interface, users can upvote and downvote articles that they think have the most relevance to trends and issues affecting the tech sector.

Note: The following is an excerpt from this week’s Earnings Trends report. You can access the full report that contains detailed historical actuals and estimates for the current and following periods, please click here>>>

Here are the key points:

• The Q1 earnings is effectively over now, with results from 492 S&P 500 members already out. Total earnings for these companies are up +13.5% from the same period last year on +7.2% higher revenues, with 72.6% beating EPS estimates and 65.2% beating revenue estimates.

• These results represent a notable improvement over what we have been seeing from the same group of companies in other recent periods. While growth reached the highest level in more than 5 years, a bigger proportion of companies have been able to beat estimates,…

First and foremost let me point out that Ray Dalio, founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, has joined Twitter so I encourage you to follow him here. Secondly I suggest you grab a cup of coffee or maybe the entire pot as he gradually lays out what he sees ahead for the market. Enjoy!

Big picture, the near term looks good and the longer term looks scary. That is because:

The economy is now at or near its best, and we see no major economic risks on the horizon for the next year or two,

There are significant long-term problems (e.g., high debt and non-debt obligations, limited abilities by central banks to stimulate, etc.) that are likely to create a squeeze,

Social and political conflicts are near their worst for the last number of decades,…

Before I present the insight on expected earnings ahead, there is one point I wish to make; that being Trump. If you're not following our President elect on Twitter, you should get with it now. Some may say it's not "Presidential" to be on TWTR but our commander and chief does what he wishes, and he wishes to scare whomever he can. At the very least, throw him up as a column on TweetDeck and watch the charts fly when he mentions a name.

Now while AMZN and GM were formerly expecting good growth in 2017, you will notice that both are now on Trumps radar for taxation and import/export fees which explains their recent trading action. There seems to be no love lost between AMZN owner Jeff Bezos. Even Trumps …

We are into the homestretch of 2016, and the markets have seen strong upside this year, benefiting from the domestic economy's resilience and the election of Donald Trump.

With just four sessions to go, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been a up a solid 14.4 percent, the S&P 500 has risen 10.8 percent and the NASDAQ Composite is 9.1 percent higher — with all the three major averages trading off their all-time closing highs.

Among the ten S&P sectors, eight have been in the green. Old economy stocks such as energy, material, industrial, financial, utility and telecom are all up by double-digit percentages. Technology stocks are also up decently. However, the healthcare sector has taken a hit.

Imagine for a minute you lived centuries ago when people believed the earth was flat, or the earth revolved around the sun, or that planets were Gods, or that disease was angry spirits or supernatural powers. You'd have an explanation for everything ... only it would be wrong. And that "wrongness" would stand in the way of true understanding and true progress until they were discarded as falsehoods.

And so it is with the Stock Market. Let me explain.

First, let me be perfectly clear. I'm a statistician so I'm not referring to philosophical or political or gut feelings or anything other than Statistical Misrepresentations. Fact, not opinion.

The noise and bustle on the streets of India’s biggest cities is a defining characteristic of a country that’s home to over a billion people.

Every year, millions more leave their traditional homes in rural towns and villages and head into urban areas. The United Nations World Cities Report 2016 says 9.6 million people will move to New Delhi by 2030.

To qualify as a megacity under the UN definition, an urban area must have a population of 10 million people. The UN takes into account urban sprawl and measures populations beyond official city limits. On these criteria, India currently has five megacities.

1. New Delhi The capital city has a population of 26.5 million people…

Sometimes the world is not yet ready for a new technology to enter the fray.

Virtual reality, for example, sat on the sidelines for many years. The industry went into hibernation around the time of the Dot Com Bust, and it has only recently re-emerged with promise.

It is only today that big companies like Microsoft, Google, Samsung, HTC, and Facebook have the infrastructure, peripheral technologies, and capital in place to properly commercialize the technology. Now, instead of using primitive 300 x 200 pixel LCD displays that were prohibitively expensive in the 90s, we are looking at a world where display will be in beautiful 4k quality. Meanwhile, accelerometers and gyroscopes can measure head movement, and modern computing power can reduce lag and latency. It took many years, but finally the true…

Investors, advertisers, and business leaders around the world are still trying to understand millennials, the generational group that will shape commerce for the foreseeable future. In the past, that’s why we’ve looked at millennial investing and banking preferences, their favorite brands, and even what real estate professionals need to understand about the generation.

Today’s infographic from Adweek is of particular interest, because it focuses on a very particular subset of millennials. The data in the graphic is from a survey of nearly 500 nominees for the…

The market for U.S. millennials is expected to blossom to $1.4 trillion by 2020, according to international consulting firm Accenture. While this generation of digital natives is already a primary marketing target today, in the upcoming years millennials will make up a hefty 30% of all retail spending in the country.

However, millennials are complex and notoriously difficult to read, even for professional marketers. With values that seem to contradict one another, it’s a challenge for companies to successfully gain market share with this audience.

As millennials mature, researchers are gaining ground on the needs and wants of this generation. This week’s Chart of the Week shares data from a comprehensive survey of 3,500 millennials that were asked, without any prompt, about their favorite brands over the past three years. The…

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global smartwatch shipments reached 8.1 million units in Q4 2015, compared with 7.9 million Swiss Watch shipments. It is the first time ever that smartwatches have outshipped Swiss watches on a global basis.

In debates about whether growth is a percentage point up or down, we too often lose sight of the absolute scale of China’s economy. No matter what rate the country grows at in 2016, its share of the global economy, and of many specific sectors, will be larger than ever. My snapshot of China in 2016? An increasingly diverse, volatile, $11 trillion economy whose performance is becoming more and more difficult to describe as one dimensional.

The reality is that China’s economy is today made up of multiple subeconomies, each more than a trillion dollars in size. Some are booming, some declining. Some are globally competitive, others fit for the scrap heap. How you feel about China depends more than ever on the parts of the economy where you compete. In 2015, selling kit to movie theaters has been great business, selling kit to steel mills less so. In your China, are you dealing with a tiger or a tortoise? Your performance in 2016 will depend on knowing the…

Investors may wade into unknown territory next month as the Federal Reserve readies the first rate hike in nearly a decade amid a corporate earnings recession.

S&P 500 earnings are on track to close their first reporting season of negative growth since the Great Recession and estimates call for sub-zero growth in the current quarter as well.

Even if the trend reverses next year, as expected, a Fed rate hike in December could mark an unprecedented conflict between a tightening cycle starting at the same time as earnings fall into recession.

"We can't think of any instances when the Fed was hiking during an (earnings) recession," said Joseph Zidle, portfolio strategist at Richard Bernstein Advisors in New…

This U.S. earnings season is on track to be the worst since 2009 as profits from oil & gas and commodity-related companies plummet leaving many to wonder, is the worst behind us or is there more to come? Is China's growth story over or taking a 'rest'? We've lived on ghost cities creating demand for so many years; where is the next growth story?

So far, about three-quarters of the S&P 500 have reported results, with profits down 3.1 percent on a share-weighted basis, data compiled by Bloomberg shows. This would be the biggest quarterly drop in earnings since the third quarter 2009, and the second straight quarter of profit declines. Earnings growth turned negative for the first time in six years in the second quarter this year.

The damage is the biggest in commodity-related industries, with the energy sector showing a 54 percent drop in quarterly earnings per share so far in…

We welcome you to post a blog entry, oped or share your daily reading with us as long as it is relevant to the topic of investing and not an attempt to sell a product, proprietary strategy, platform or other service. Please provide links to any research data and if re-posting other articles, give credit where credit is due providing a back link to the original site.

300 words minimum per post. You may also sort by category or search by topic. Don't forget to comment and please "share" via Facebook, Twitter and Google+. If you have any questions, please contact us.